Re: [CA] COX HSI - High Latency - Bad routing help - San Diego

I have heard about 'Interconnect Agreements' that predetermine routing to some extent. To my understanding, this is typically decided between an ISP and Host Provider, I could be wrong.

My primary question relates to your statement, how Cox may not even have a choice in the matter. If Cox doesn't, then who does, and would one go about resolving such a routing issue?

FYI, my ping to google from San Diego, CA is 200ms. This seems rather absurd and relates to the 'routing' issue I'm talking about. At work, which is literally miles away from my house pings 8ms to google, and 8ms to the server I frequent the most. When I used ATT Internet (VDSL), I pinged 30s to google, 20s to the above sever I mentioned. No strange 'scenic' routes, usually a direct shot more or less. Cox has been a different story altogether.

If you're seeing that much latency to google you may have something else going on other than routing. As for getting routing changed that's kind of like asking for interstate highways to be moved. There's actually some flexibility but routing is largely subject to geography and topology of networks.

My primary question relates to your statement, how Cox may not even have a choice in the matter. If Cox doesn't, then who does, and would one go about resolving such a routing issue?

I don't know; but I will offer a case-in-point. Before AT&T was bought by SBC, the favored Tier 1 peering was with Level 3. Level 3 has 3 (that I know of) West Coast peering centers: Seattle, Washington, San Jose, California, and Los Angeles, California. For reasons I don't completely understand, SBC peered with Level only in San Jose. So an SBC user in San Diego, California would see his TCP/IP traffic ride SBC transit from San Diego to San Jose, then be handed off to Level 3. If he was going to a web site in the Southeastern U.S., his packets would then double back south, to Los Angeles, before turning east; then through Dallas, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia before leaving Level 3 transit for the destination.

Then there is the case of a cousin's FiL down in Morgan Hill, California. Only about 20 miles from my house; but, while working on his computer, I tried tracing to my server (located in my garage). MH is about the northern limit of the Charter Central Coast market. Their transit hub is in San Luis Obispo, California. So the route from his computer to mine was:

There are folks in Grant's Pass, Oregon who route north to Portland before routing south to San Jose, California.

Last Mile providers tend to peer with Tier 1 transit on factors of transit cost, and routing cost. A Tier 1 peer may give lower price if the provider peers at a hub preferred by the Tier 1 provider.

The decision basis is all very murky, to me, and probably requires requests to the user's provider's NOC. Your only hope, really, is that someone like CoxTech1 knows whom to contact, and actually sees a problem, or can convince a NOC engineer to check if there is a problem. And if the problem is beyond the Cox transit, as in peering capacity between Cogentco and AT&T, or with Blizzard capacity issues with their upstream (AT&T Services), Cox may not be able to do squat.--Norman~Oh Lord, why have you come~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum